Aurelio Damiani

Damiani e Rossi

In the Marche region he came first, long before Pompili, Cedroni and Uliassi but also long before this so-called bistronomy movement that seems to be the last fashion, with its strong wish to revisit (or de-ethnicize) important culinary traditions with low prices.
Pan and market chef Aurelio was born in a small town in the inland of Ascoli from a farmers family (his mother, an incomparable chef, still looks after the kitchen garden behind the restaurant).

After studying at the hotel management school and some experiences throughout international hôtellerie, pressed by nostalgia, he came back home in Torre di Palme where in 1977 he opened his first restaurant, Jemo a lu Fucarò. Here he got the encouragement of great Italian food-journalist Luigi Veronelli: «Good job, go on like this!». And he went on like this, furthermore enlightened by a dinner spent at the court of Gualtiero Marchesi, his ideal teacher.
Customers’ taste started changing and his cuisine discovered lightness: in 1985 Aurelio turned toward the sea and held his new place, La Capannina, a research laboratory where nothing, from the ingredients choice to the quality of porcelains, was left to fate.

Nine years later he was missing countryside and his first fatherhood led him to move with his family to a cottage on San Giorgio hills, where he opened the Trattoria Damiani e Rossi. His luggage included a very skilled know how on fish: precision while cooking and a light hand applied to local cuisine, without contaminations.
Synthesis came in 2006 with the purchase of an old chalet on the seashore of Porto San Giorgio, Damiani e Rossi mare, where he moves every year in summertime, offering customers a daily cuisine based on Adriatic fishes. Here and there, habits don’t change: «I buy supplies every morning in the market until 11. It’s the moment I love: I like to talk to supplier, choose ingredients, rethink recipes. That’s because there’s no menu in my restaurants: I’m peremptory about that».